A view of fast food

I would like you to try a little thought experiment with me. Let’s put our heads together to see if we can design the Worst Diet in the World, one that would be most likely to undermine health and shorten life.

To begin, let’s stuff it with calories, more than most will be able to burn off, so that it will promote obesity. We should overload it with carbohydrate calories. That means lots of refined flour in fluffy breads and pastries, a lot of potatoes, sweets, and sweet drinks……

For fat we will need a glut of saturated fat in the form of cheese, butter, cream, and other whole-milk products, along with a lot of beef and unskinned chicken. That will ensure that most people will develop unhealthy levels of cholesterol and increased risks of cardiovascular disease. We should also include plenty of fat in the form of margarine, vegetable shortening, and snack foods… We should also throw in some well-used cooking fat, consisting of cheaper vegetable oils….

As for protein, we should probably go for as much as we can eat and make it mostly commercially raised meat and poultry rather than fish or vegetable protein. That will maximize intake of drugs and hormones used to raise animals for meat as well as environmental toxins concentrated in their fat and other tissues. A lot of the meat in the diet should be processed (into hot dogs, lunch meats, and the like) to add more sodium, saturated fat, and unhealthful chemical additives. We should encourage everyone to drink cow’s milk throughout life to make sure we affect the lactose-intolerant fraction of the population…

The Worst Diet in the World should also be distinguished by what it does not provide. We will want very inadequate amounts of the micronutrients, especially those that protect the body from effects we are trying to achieve by the above selection of macronutrients. The easiest way to make sure of that is to restrict fruits and vegetables. Of course, we will allow unrestricted amounts of floury potatoes (preferably French fried or otherwise prepared with quantities of margarine, butter, and sour cream)… but we don’t want people eating too many greens and brightly coloured fruits and vegetables…. Perhaps pickles, high in sodium, and ketchup, high in sugar and sodium, will count as vegetables in our diet.

From what I know about the scientific basis of human nutrition, I am quite sure that a diet of this sort, though it will sustain life and growth, will also have tremendous consequence as people age. It will increase the frequency of degenerative diseases, lowering the age at which they appear, accelerating their progression, and worsening their severity. It will certainly promote obesity, hypertension, coronary heart disease, and cancer and probably will adversely affect liver, kidney and brain function….. It might even make people less energetic and worsen their moods…

Thank you for indulging this exercise in fantasy. Now I have a real-world assignment for you. I would like you to visit three different fast-food restaurants of your choice, study the menus in them, and observe what the customers are eating. Then I want you to think about how closely those menus approximate the Worst Diet in the World we have just designed…..

Exercise 1

Find the English equivalents to the following words:

Руйнувати здоров”я, наповнювати, спалювати, сприяти, ожиріння, очищений (рафінований), пухнастий, кондитерські вироби, велика кількість, незбиране молоко, забезпечувати, серцево-судинний, споживання, тканина, піддавати обробці, натрій, добавка, молочний цукор, живильний мікроелемент, обмежувати, борошнистий, харчування, підтримувати, тягар, несприятливо.